


Black Stone Path

by wynnebat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: BAMF Harry Potter, Ghosts, HP: EWE, M/M, Master of Death Harry Potter, Near Death Experiences, Post-Hogwarts, Rescue Missions, The Deathly Hallows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22667743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wynnebat/pseuds/wynnebat
Summary: "What's happening?" Harry asked, coming to a stop next to him. He hadn't seen that look on Ron's face since the war, when Ron wore it almost constantly. Harry was reluctant to do the same. Five years since the end of the war, he'd learned to become comfortable with peace. And because there was nothing else that got the Weasley family in such a panic, he added, "Who's hurt?"Ron swallowed, turning his head to look Harry's way. "It's Bill."Fuck, Harry thought, and that was about all that he could think. Words were useless, always had been.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Bill Weasley
Comments: 19
Kudos: 897





	Black Stone Path

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Enchantedtalisman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enchantedtalisman/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Amal! I hope you have a wonderful day and an even better year. I wish you all the love, happiness, good health, and peace of mind, and am sending you my strongest internet hug. Please enjoy this fic! 😘

It took a few days for the news to get out.

Harry wasn’t in the first circle that learned of the truth. It spread in waves, as things often did, first to the Gringotts team that checked in with the team working on the Poldus Tomb. A day went by, then two. When no response was incoming, more people were contacted, and the site was thoroughly searched. When the tomb was discovered to be missing and the team studying it nowhere to be found, the management of Gringotts became involved.

Three days after that, a goblin representative arrived at the Burrow.

By the time Arthur's owl reached Harry, the house was in pandemonium. Harry arrived without changing out of his auror's robes, something he usually tried to do immediately once off duty. He was one man in a sea of redheads and when he couldn't find Hermione's bushy hair in the midst of the yelling and madness, he found the next best thing.

Ron was leaning against the kitchen wall, a grim expression on his face.

"What's happening?" Harry asked, coming to a stop next to him. He hadn't seen that look on Ron's face since the war, when Ron wore it almost constantly. Harry was reluctant to do the same. Five years since the end of the war, he'd learned to become comfortable with peace. And because there was nothing else that got the Weasley family in such a panic, he added, "Who's hurt?"

Ron swallowed, turning his head to look Harry's way. "It's Bill."

 _Fuck,_ Harry thought, and that was about all that he could think. Words were useless, always had been.

"He's been doing some excavation work on the Poldus Tomb, you know the one, it appears above-ground only once every some odd decades in a new part of the world, and as Bill wouldn't stop telling us, it's a great honor to get a position on the team that's examining it this time. That asshole—" Ron nodded in the direction of the goblin facing the full blast of Molly's anger "—tells us that Bill's team got further inside than anyone on record before the tomb abruptly vanished again. He came here to tell us that Bill was dead."

"Is he?" Harry asked.

Ron shook his head. The muscles in his jaw were tight. "Not according to our clock. Mortal peril isn't much better than dead, but it's all we've got. His hand hasn't fallen off."

Harry's gaze first turned to the empty space on the wall where the clock should be, then toward Molly, who was holding up the clock and gesturing to it. It was very close to the Gringotts representative's face. The goblin has a surly look on his face. Harry could just barely make out Bill's hand among the many hands of the clock: it rested squarely against the mortal peril designation as opposed to the rest of the hands, the majority of which were at home.

Harry's own hand was behind all the hands clustered at home. Molly and Arthur created it when he and Ginny broke up again less than a year after the war; it was still the kindest gift he had ever received, and always bought some peace to his mind when he saw it.

Not today, though.

"What are they going to do about it?" Harry asked.

"Mum got them to release the last known location of the tomb. Hermione and George are already there, but they would've sent word if they found anything. We're heading there soon, all of us."

"I'm coming, too."

Ron nodded. "Knew you would."

His hand was suddenly on Harry's shoulder, warm and steady, and Harry understood then how much he needed his best mate to keep him grounded. He felt like he would float off into the air without him. It came to Harry then that he was supposed to meet Bill for dinner only tomorrow. He would have given the Weasleys the location even if Gringotts hadn't already released it. Bill had told him about it months ago, though he'd asked Harry to keep it hush-hush. Sort of like the fact that they'd been meeting a few times a month now, both unwilling and uninterested in revealing their friendship to the world and their family quite yet. The world was loud; the Weasleys, while infinitely wonderful and accepting, were louder.

It wasn't quite friendship and it wasn't quite romance, yet, and it wasn't at all something Harry was ready to lose before it could begin. "Let's go now. I doubt Gringotts is going to give us anything more."

Ron agreed and swiped one of the portkeys the goblins had reluctantly provided the family, along with the assurance that the tomb had never been found again after vanishing, except for when it chose to appear decades later.

Harry shared a portkey with Ron without making a fuss about the fact that he could apparate the distance easily. It was easier to let the extent of his magical power lie in memory than bring it up again. He wasn't ashamed or afraid of their reaction. Harry had simply never been one for showing off.

The portkey brought him and Ron to a large, open clearing at the edge of a forest. A little ways to the east was a small town that Harry had become quietly familiar with in these past few months, although he'd never visited the scene of the tomb. It had been strictly off-limits to all but Gringotts personnel, since Gringotts claimed the tomb for themselves after discovering it centuries ago. Neville was there, too, alongside Hermione and George, testing the ground with something that looked like a cross between a highly dangerous snake and a vine.

There was nothing to be found. Harry's gut feeling said so and later so did Hermione. He helped cast every detection spell known to the group and some that Hermione found in the small library she kept on herself at all times. No luck. By the time the rest of the Weasleys arrived, Harry was the first to greet them. He sought out Molly and the Weasley clock in her hands.

"Oh, Harry," Molly said, and set the clock down to hug him tightly. "We'll find him. We will."

Bill's arrow was slowly slipping from mortal peril, hanging onto the clock by only a hair of glue and magic.

Harry hugged her back, his grip tight. "I know. We're lucky, aren't we?"

"You most of all," she replied, patting his cheek once the hug ended. Then she put a paper-wrapped sandwich in his hand because he'd left before eating. Harry couldn't believe she'd noticed with everything else going on.

As the Weasley clan spread out across the field, Harry stood back, unsure of what he should be doing. He took a bite out of the sandwich without thinking much, then ate the rest because even on the edge of grief, Molly's cooking was the best. He watched George and Hermione work together on a runic array, Arthur and Charlie discuss whether they should search the forest just in case, Percy head off into town to question its residents again, Molly and Ginny and Ron coordinate the groups and do magic of their own. There were people Harry didn't recognize in the mix and some that he did: neighbors, friends, Bill's other colleagues. Fleur arrived with a group of fellow blondes and Gabrielle waved at him, smiling when Harry waved back. Even after being divorced from Bill a few years now, Fleur was still part of the family.

Lights and a table were set up as it grew dark. Food appeared almost out of nowhere. The clock was wedged into the dirt, leaning against one of the legs of the table, set out of everyone's line of sight and yet everyone kept checking on it as they passed. The arm still hadn't fallen off.

Harry had tried all his spells.

But as the arm of the clock inched downwards, he realized there was something he hadn't tried.

With a crack of apparition, he disappeared. At home, he took a moment to throw off his auror's robes and put some day robes on, on top of which he added the invisibility cloak. He didn't get much use out of it anymore; in the field, an invisibility charm was quicker to cast. Besides, as one of the few things he had from his parents, the cloak was deeply precious to him. The next object was almost as easy, if more solemn. Harry exited Dumbledore's tomb with the wand he once swore he wouldn't touch and walked the rest of the way to the forest.

Two hallows against his skin. The third called to him, desperate to be reunited with the rest now that the time had come. Harry gave into its urging as he never had before.

It hadn't been so important, before.

He'd heard the hallows ever since he mastered all three of them. He always knew where they were. It had been a comfort of sorts: as long as he kept an eye on them, he could trust that no one had broken into Dumbledore's tomb or picked up a strange stone in the Forbidden Forest.

Now, it was Harry who picked up the smooth black stone, blowing off dirt from it and saying, "Poldus, I summon you."

The stone played no tricks with his master. There must have been many with that name, but it sent him the only one that mattered. Poldus appeared as a wisp of gray smoke. He was a tall man with intricately designed robes, the details of which Harry could not see through the smoke, a short beard, and a scepter in his left hand.

"Who dares to wake Poldus the Dishonorable from his sleep?"

"Harry Potter," Harry replied, mostly because it was a long time since he'd gotten to properly introduce himself. "I need a way to raise your tomb. There are people trapped inside."

At that, Poldus laughed. It was not a nice laugh, but it was loud and echoed through the forest. " _You_ need to raise _my_ tomb? You, a potter of no great heritage, believe yourself to be worthy of my great tomb? Far better men have tried and failed. What do you have? Love?" He spat the word like a curse.

"And determination, and the willingness to do what I can to free him."

"You'll need more. My tomb has come to join me in the afterlife once more. I send it out occasionally to amuse myself; the afterlife gets dull, even for a necromancer. Anyone within it will join me and become my loyal puppets. It's been too long since I've had company."

Harry turned the stone over in his hand, careful not to drop it. The cloak was warm against his shoulders, but Poldus paid it no mind. Harry was invisible to the living world, but Poldrus was not of this world. Neither was Harry, not all the time. He could not learn necromancy in the scant time he had before Bill's clock hand fell. All he had was himself: the good, the bad, the parts he embraced and the parts he shunned, and in the past it had always been enough. Two killing curses later, he was still alive. Countless deaths by the wand of Voldemort and his war, Harry was still around, still a Gryffindor to his core and a man who cared so deeply for the people he loved.

There were so many paths etched into the face of the earth, wrinkles and lines. Harry had once avoided walking this path, but it was still his, down to the very stones that littered it.

"I am the master of death," Harry said, simply, like he'd never once said aloud. He watched Poldus's face tighten. "I may not be a necromancer, but I have dominion over death."

There was no manual for him to read; no one to tell him what he could and could not do. There was only the power thrumming through the hallows, power that Harry now realized was his own. Without him, they were just three pretty objects. He reached out toward the wisp of Poldus the Dishonorable. Not for the man who flinched away from him, awed and terrified at the same time, but for the scepter in his hand.

Harry's hand came away with the scepter resting in his grip. It was a grand thing: rubies and emeralds and jewels of every color set into the head and a cold metal base that felt good against his hand.

"You cannot do that," Poldus yelled. His voice came as if far away. "What have you done to me, you—"

Harry slipped the stone in his pocket and took off the cloak.

He didn't have any time to waste.

Harry appeared in the clearing once more. He ignored the way someone said his name. Instead, he tapped the scepter against the solid ground and waited. The earth shook and his family fled to the corners of the field, away from the dark shape rising from the center of the field. It came slowly, unwilling and angry, and the magic of the hallows laughed as it encircled the field. There was nowhere for the tomb to run.

It was a sinister-looking thing, all black stone columns and walls, with the symbol of Poldus atop the entrance. As soon as it was entirely above ground, people began to step out of that entrance.

If Harry were looking at the Weasley clock, he would see Bill's hand tick away from mortal peril.

But Harry's gaze didn't leave the tomb. He let the scepter fall to the ground as he stepped closer. Bill's team was running out, all with stark relief on their faces, and the last one out of the tomb was also the most familiar one. Bill met Harry halfway, hugging him before Harry could do more than process the fact that Bill was alive.

"You did this, didn't you?" Bill asked without letting him go. "I heard Poldus in the walls of the tomb before it began to rise again. I thought I was going to die, but then I heard your voice."

Harry nodded as much as he was able. "I had to save you. Some long-dead asshole necromancer isn't going to take you away from me. What he said about love—"

"I heard," Bill said, a little gently, releasing Harry from the hug but not going far.

"People should stop underestimating love. It does some pretty great things."

"It really does," Bill agreed, and kissed him, and Harry forgot all about Podrus the Dishonorable.

Later, Harry would tap the scepter against the earth again, this time settling the tomb back where it belonged: the underworld. If Bill ever wanted to research it again, Harry would raise it and stay by Bill's side. Later, Harry would look to the Weasley family, and see the love and relief in their faces, and realize that the master of death could be loved as much as Harry-just-Harry could be. Later, all later, because the only thing that mattered at the moment was the way Bill held him close and kissed him, and the way Harry did the same.

All in all, it was a damn good rescue.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm also on [tumblr](https://wynnefic.tumblr.com).


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